Author: Dave Farquhar

Choose your passwords carefully

Dave Farquhar security
Choose your passwords carefully

I participated in a brief discussion on Twitter the other week about being careful how you choose your passwords. Passwords can and will show up in places you don’t intend. When that happens, you don’t want it to cause a problem. Here’s what happened to me once when I didn’t choose a password carefully.

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How you view message headers in Outlook

Dave Farquhar Office, security
How you view message headers in Outlook

Viewing message headers is helpful for troubleshooting, and also making sure you’re not getting phished. Microsoft moved things around in recent versions of Outlook, so here’s how to view message headers in Outlook–the current version.

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What happened to Faraday Electronics?

Dave Farquhar Hardware
What happened to Faraday Electronics?

Faraday Electronics was, for a brief period of time, a leading maker of integrated chipsets for XT-class PC clones. But if you’re fixing an old XT clone and need a Faraday chip, they can be hard to come by. Knowing what happened to Faraday Electronics can help you in locating spare parts.

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What does the Qualys cloud agent do?

Dave Farquhar security
What does the Qualys cloud agent do?

If you work in a corporate environment, there’s a chance you see something called the Qualys Cloud Agent running on your computer. And information about this mysterious agent can be hard to come by? What does the Qualys cloud agent do? How does it work? I’m glad you asked.

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Windows Zip folders slow? The fix.

Dave Farquhar Windows
Windows Zip folders slow? The fix.

The other day my son was working with a Zip file and getting frustrated. He was trying to delete a large number of files from it, and the CPU went to 100% usage and never finished. Here’s how I got him around the problem of high CPU usage with Zip files, or Windows Zip folders being slow.
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Ryobi Brushless 20 in. Walk Behind Push Lawn Mower review

Dave Farquhar DIY
Ryobi Brushless 20 in. Walk Behind Push Lawn Mower review

After a good experience with a smaller model, I bought a larger 20-inch Ryobi lawn mower. This is my Ryobi Brushless 20 in. Walk Behind Push Lawn Mower review.

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Who makes Masterforce hand tools for Menards?

Dave Farquhar DIY
Who makes Masterforce hand tools for Menards?

Masterforce is Menards’ house brand for power tools and hand tools. As a house brand, they are less expensive than the big name brands. But are Masterforce hand tools good? And who makes Masterforce hand tools for Menards? I did some digging to find out.

Masterforce hand tools are made by Apex Tool Group, a company owned by Bain Capital. Apex also makes several brands you may have heard of, including Wiss, Allen, and Weller.

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Force a Qualys Cloud Agent scan

Dave Farquhar security
Force a Qualys Cloud Agent scan

Unlike its leading competitor, the Qualys Cloud Agent scans automatically. This means you don’t have to schedule scans, which is good, but it also means the Qualys agent essentially has free will. The latest results may or may not show up as quickly as you’d like. How to initiate an agent scan on demand was easily the most frequent question I got during the five years I supported Qualys for a living. Here’s how to force a Qualys Cloud Agent scan.

You can force a Qualys Cloud Agent scan on Windows by toggling a registry key, or from Linux or Mac OS X by running the cloudagentctl.sh shell script.

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Is a dryer worth repairing? Yes, and here’s why

Dave Farquhar DIY
Is a dryer worth repairing? Yes, and here’s why

Is a dryer worth repairing? Is it cheaper to repair or replace a dryer? I argue it is cheaper to repair and worth doing, even if you have to pay someone to come do it. I’ll also explain where the thought comes from that a dryer might not be worth repairing, and why that thought is wrong.

You can generally repair a dryer for $125 by replacing a heating element or thermal fuse vs replacing the whole thing for $350. Since there’s little difference in life expectancy between the two options, it’s generally cheaper and more practical to repair a dryer than to replace it.

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What was MR BIOS?

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing
What was MR BIOS?

In the summer of 2021, Youtuber Adrian Black was restoring an IBM 5170. And he lamented that he wasn’t able to get all of the original parts working together and have a machine that would do what he wanted. It wasn’t a pure IBM 5170 anymore. One of the things he did was put a Quadtel BIOS in it, which received mixed reactions. But that brought to mind another option someone who needed to soup up a 5170 in the late 80s could have used: MR BIOS. What was MR BIOS?

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